what happens to the little girl in the nutcracker ballet
Critic's Notebook
10 Ways to Tell if Your 'Nutcracker' Is Traditional
The "Nutcracker" season is upon united states — but what's a "Nutcracker"? And why should anyone care? Before I ever saw information technology, the idea of "The Nutcracker" seemed to embody all that was picayune well-nigh ballet: overfamiliar hit tunes, dancing children, dancing toys, dancing sweets.
Yet those standard numbers modify when you hear them in context. And those children, toys and sweets get moving in a product that takes childhood seriously. The ballet, building brilliantly, is one of the great 19th-century children'due south stories.
The original 2-act production, in 1892 in Leningrad, was the brainchild of Ivan Vzevolozhsky (director of the Mariinsky Theater), Marius Petipa (choreographer) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (composer), adapting Alexandre Dumas's version of Eastward.T.A. Hoffmann'south story. Compromises, as in and then many theatrical ventures, abounded. Tchaikovsky had to make changes and cuts to his original score. When Petipa fell ill during work on the first human activity, he was replaced by his assistant, Lev Ivanov, who, under pressure, farmed out at least 1 dance to a colleague. Tchaikovsky died the side by side year. Farther revisions have gone on ever since.
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Somehow, all the same, "The Nutcracker" became a Christmas fixture in the mid-20th century. Every twelvemonth productions pop back into life by the hundred, from Vienna to Hawaii. About all the same follow the same bones conventions established by that kickoff version: a piffling girl heroine, her mysterious godfather (the magician Drosselmeyer), a battle between toy soldiers and mice, a woods glade of dancing Snowflakes, a ballerina Sugarplum Fairy in a tutu presiding over a realm of Sweets. But variations abound.
Ordinarily the setting is over a century ago, and normally in Europe — merely some are gear up in various American cities at different points over the final 250 years. One is gear up in a Dickensian orphanage; another ends with characters jumping into a New York yellowish cab. And then there are the burlesque versions: "Slutcracker," "Nutcracker Rouge."
Many people crave a traditional "Nutcracker," often the i they grew upward with. Just often it turns out that their notion of "Nutcracker" tradition goes back only to the mid-20th century. And does even a "Nutcracker" connoisseur actually want a production that makes no departures from the original? That way pedantry lies.
Still, it helps to follow "The Nutcracker" with a clear idea of what its makers envisioned. If we discover that nosotros prefer some of the alterations that have been fabricated in the last century, that gives u.s.a. new hope: "The Nutcracker" is a work in progress. And the chief reason for this is the marvel of the score — there'south ever more going on in this music than whatsoever one staging tin fulfill.
So hither are 10 "Nutcracker" checkpoints to aid you work out where your "Nutcracker" is or isn't true to the ballet's heart and (a different affair) its tradition.
1. THIS IS Not A Dearest STORY Unlike nigh every other ballet from the 19th century, "The Nutcracker" isn't about falling in love. So if you see the heroine Clara dancing a romantic pas de deux with the Nutcracker prince, you're watching an alternative version; I telephone call this anti-"Nutcracker" behavior. You're besides watching an unnecessary cliché.
2. PATHS THAT MUST Non Cantankerous Drosselmeyer should exist seen only in Act I, the Sugarplum only in Act II. Function of the story's mystery is that they never meet. Simply the two lead children — the heroine and the Nutcracker Prince — meet both.
Paradigm
3. THE OVERTURE: Just LISTEN If you see whatever character during the overture, yous're watching a modern version. Tchaikovsky's overture — with instruments playing high, fast and boisterous — is on the miniature scale of childhood itself, with passages of rhythmic syncopation that embody the excitement of a kid'south eager anticipation. Just listen, listen, listen. But many productions, mistrusting an audience'southward power to cope without spectacle, attempt to distract from the music by starting to tell the story.
4. CHILD'S PLAY Clara — sometimes called Marie, as in Hoffmann's original story and in George Balanchine'southward version — should be played by a footling girl; Drosselmeyer's nephew (who later becomes the Nutcracker and then trivial prince) by a piffling boy. Their only dancing occurs at the opening Christmas party. (It's not unusual, withal, to see adult principal dancers in these roles.)
5. WHO'S ON POINT? Clara never dances on point, simply the story brings her a serial of increasingly marvelous women who do — clockwork toys at the party, the dancing Snowflakes, the Sweets and, above all, the Sugarplum, the dancing prima. (Well, that'due south the dominion. Many productions reduce the ballet'due south contrasts by putting Clara on indicate throughout.)
6. DON'T MESS WITH THE SCORE Tchaikovsky's musical composition has such integrity and diversity that information technology should never be revised, cut or supplemented. And yet, and notwithstanding …. I know only two productions that play all of Tchaikovsky's score in the right order — Marker Morris's "The Hard Nut" and Alexei Ratmansky'southward American Ballet Theater production, both of which count as alternative versions, irresolute the story more than nigh.
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7. ACT I'Southward BALLERINA? The Christmas tree must grow huge. As Balanchine said when fighting for money for his product'southward tree in 1954, the tree is the ballerina of Act I. Some productions can't afford an upwards mobile tree; and some take the opportunity to turn the show into a psychodrama here. But the music, a gigantic crescendo of ascending phrases, tells you what's needed.
eight. TRANSFORMATION (NO DANCING, Please) This is the most controversial of all. After the tree grows and after the boxing between the toy soldiers and mice comes phenomenal music that should never be danced. True, Tchaikovsky gave information technology a potent trip the light fantastic toe-like rapture — merely, like the overture, he meant information technology to stay undanced. This is transformation music in which the whole stage changes and we see the unknown territory through which the children volition pass. Where there was one huge Christmas tree, now we see a whole snow-clad woods.
I know merely one production that has the backbone to leave this undanced: Balanchine's. Many introduce a pas de deux here for the Snowfall Queen and her King — an anachronistic tradition that began effectually 1940. (Better that than the as widespread romantic pas de deux for Clara and her Nutcracker. See No. 1)
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9. KEEP THE PANTOMIME DAME Act II has to include Mother Ginger (or Mère Gigogne). She's a larger-than-life fertility figure, a pantomime dame (drag character) whose crinoline hides multiple children — they dance their way out from under it and and so dorsum in. Audiences admire her, just for some reason European productions omit her. She'south not in good gustation — and that's the indicate. "The Nutcracker" is not only a bear witness for the polite and pretty.
ten. THE PAS DE DEUX The big Act 2 pas de deux has to be danced by the Sugarplum Fairy and her condescending. If your cavalier doesn't go his solo, you're probably watching Balanchine's version (which takes his "Ballet is woman" policy 1 degree too far). If you see Clara and her Nutcracker dance the Sugarplum numbers, you lot're probably watching a production by someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, and you're far into a mind-set light-years from the vision of 1892.
Prototype
At that place are other points to consider in "Nutcracker" tradition. Later all, no product is completely faithful to the original. How, for case, does it end? In 1892 it was with a vision of bees dancing around a hive — something nobody has staged for over a century. Can we therefore say that whatever one ending is better than some other?
I think so. Listen to how the score ends — with flowing music that implies travel, echoing the start of Human activity 2. It does not take us back (as many productions do) to the start of Act I. Clara and the trivial Prince are, equally in the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story, parting to even so other realms; they aren't going dorsum to her native Nuremberg.
The best productions of classics aren't nearly puzzle-solving or filling in some 19th-century prescription. They're about discovery and imagination, the very things at the heart of the "Nutcracker" story.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/arts/dance/what-makes-a-traditional-nutcracker-ballet.html
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